


In Another Life

by ilokheimsins



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Established Relationship, Lydia being a BAMF, M/M, Not s3 compliant except for Cora, There's a happy-ish ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilokheimsins/pseuds/ilokheimsins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Derek dies, Stiles nearly goes insane trying to bring him back.  And now that Derek's alive again, it hurts so much that Stiles can't breath.  Because this isn't what he wanted.  This isn't Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story of super-angst because I read/watch/think of angsty things and then only way I know how to make myself un-sad is to make other people sad and this is a product of that.

Stiles is so tired of getting asked what’s wrong, why he smells like the dead. He knows Deaton wouldn’t approve, knows it like he knows his magic, a feeling deep in his bones. He doesn’t know how he’d explain it anyway.

Stiles reaches down to stroke Derek’s chin, listens to the clack of bones as Derek, or what’s left of him, turns into the touch. And Stiles sees a flash of what Derek used to be. Sees the hair that was soft as silk to the touch, the cheekbones that cast deep shadows in the hollows of Derek’s cheeks. He can practically feel the scratch of Derek’s stubble against his hands and he buries his head into the crook of Derek’s shoulder, pressing his forehead into vertebrae.

  
Sometimes Lydia shows up and purses her lips at him. She’s the only one who knows. And she sits with him and they’ll watch Derek’s skeleton morph and crack into its werewolf form before slipping into the woods for a run. And then Lydia lets Stiles babble about everything and nothing and lets him cry on her shoulder. Not once does she comment on the stench of death that Stiles knows clings to him.

  
Today, Derek’s run off, bones gleaming under the full moon and Lydia waits. She only has bits of the story, but Stiles seems particularly irate today. The bags under his eyes are darker and his hand is ticking away against his knee. So Lydia settles in and waits, places her palms flat on the cool wood of Stiles’ porch and leans back.

  
“I miss him so much,” Stiles says eventually, voice thin and soft.

  
“So much.”

  
***

  
Stiles feels it before he sees it. Like a fissure in his heart has just opened up and burst with boiling hot magma. And then he sees Derek with a hole blasted clear through his body, right where his heart should be. He sees the warlock standing across the clearing, prone bodies of the pack around him. The warlock is saying something, triumphant about something, but Stiles can’t hear him.

He only hears the roar of blood in his ears, the fire of the pain crackling through his body, and the dull thud of Derek hitting the ground. Later, Lydia will tell him he lost it completely, that his eyes bled black and that he rent the warlock apart, keeping him alive all the while.

“It was disgusting,” She’ll say, in that prim Lydia way of hers that means Stiles got blood all over her favorite skirt but she won’t say anything because she was probably moments away from doing something similar.

But when he comes back to himself in that clearing, the warlock is nothing more than a bloody fleshy mess. Stiles crawls over to Derek on trembling hands, tries to force their bond to wake up, because it’s an impossibility that Derek is dead. Stiles presses his hands to Derek’s face, presses his forehead down.

He begs and pleads, tries to push his magic into Derek, wills it to heal the hole in Derek’s body. That’s how the pack finds him, when they wake up. They find him crouched in the ground, knees caging in Derek’s body, tears streaming down his face as he screams prayers and babbles about being in a nightmare.

Eventually it’s Lydia who pulls him off and clutches him to her chest until his body-wracking sobs turn into little hiccupping sniffles that eventually fade entirely. Stiles stays there, slumped in Lydia’s arms as the pack howls their own agony to the moon.

***

They bury Derek under the full moon, in the middle of a clearing that Stiles spelled to keep anything and everything out. Everything is done properly. Cora says the last rights, places the wolfsbane over the bare patch of earth that marks Derek’s grave. Stiles is the one who lights it on fire with his eyes closed, until the smoke condenses to something tangible.

It slips over the clearing and ensconces Stiles with scent. Smoky hands run themselves over his face and Stiles can hear the barest echoes of Derek.

_I’m sorry_.

Stiles’ lower lip wobbles and he squeezes his eyes shut tighter. The smoke pushes in and Stiles pretends that it’s actually Derek, with his rabbit teeth and soft lips, kissing him before pulling back.

_I love you._

Stiles’ eyes snap open just in time for him to see the smoke swirl up into the sky and dissipate. The pack hesitates between staying and leaving until Lydia shoos them out of the clearing. They slink into the woods, casting hesitant glances over their shoulders at Stiles. But Lydia turns a fiery glare on them and Stiles can hear them making their way towards the pack house.

Lydia sits him down in front of the raised mound in the ground and drapes a blanket over his shoulders.

“I’ll come back for you in the morning,” She says and presses a kiss to his temple, “Try to remember that you have magic when you get cold.”

“Yes mum,” Stiles says, lips quirking a little.

Lydia lets out a choked laugh and then vanishes into the forest.

***

It’s only after hours of grieving and screaming that Stiles has the idea.

Peter did it. So why can’t Stiles?

The sun pours over the edges of the distant mountains and Stiles looks up, conviction in his bones.

He’s going to raise Derek from death.

***

When Stiles can’t figure it out within the first week, his magic goes mad. It lashes out at Scott when he comes in the door to tell Stiles to take a nap. Stiles shrieks that he doesn’t need sleep, that it’s only been a day since he started researching.

It takes Scott nearly twenty minutes to convince Stiles that he’s been awake for a week. And then it takes another hour for Scott to get Stiles to stop sobbing.

“At least his body is alright?” Scott jokes.

Stiles bolts up at that and stares at Scott.

“Decomposition rates. Bodily decay, bacterial growth,” Stiles whispers, “I totally forgot to account for that.”

Scott’s attempts to stop Stiles as he shoves his way through the pack house are met with futility, “Wait, where are you—”

The door shuts behind Stiles with an air of finality and Scott is left with one hand outstretched, grasping for a warlock that doesn’t want to be held. It’s only another few minutes before the entire pack is out the door, noses to the air, trying to find Stiles. But there’s nothing, because when Stiles doesn’t want to be found, he makes damn sure he can’t be found.

Hours later, Lydia finds him in the stacks of the library, reading about biological decomposition in the moonlight streaming in through the Beacon Hills library windows. She sits by him quietly and flips over a sheaf of papers that detail everything about decomposition rates and keeping a body decomposing at a slower rate.

“Don’t do anything too stupid,” She says, kisses him on the temple and leaves him. She tells Scott and the others that Stiles isn’t at the library, says to try the school because it has biology text books.

The next day, Stiles casts a spell that lowers the temperature of the earth surrounding Derek to just cold enough to slow decomposition but not cold enough to freeze.

“I’ll bring you back, I promise,” He says, forehead pressed into the cold of the earth.

***

It’s been a month since they buried Derek and Stiles is going out of his mind. He showers, sleeps, and eats regularly, just to get the pack off his case. But he’s clearly not all there anymore.

Stiles finds Peter’s notes on the rituals of raising a werewolf and he thinks he’s done it. That all he has to do is follow Peter’s book and he’ll have Derek back by the full moon.

“Lydia, Lydia!” He yells, pounding down the stairs two at a time. He flings himself around Lydia and spins her, grinning wildly all the while.

“I found it,” Stiles says, breathless, “I found it. I can bring him back.”

He barely notices Scott in the corner, staring at him sadly. Stiles drops Lydia and careens over to the breakfast counter, squeezes Isaac in his happiness and then spins off to grapple Scott into a hug.

“I can do it,” Stiles says. Scott opens his mouth to say that no, Stiles really can’t because there’s something wrong with Peter’s notes. But then he can’t. Sounds won’t come out. Really, honestly, Scott thinks, when was the last time Stiles smiled? When was the last time Stiles felt like pack? The bond’s still there, but it’s wrong somehow. It’s twisting, fraying, warping into something darker. And Scott is afraid that it will poison them.

So he just hugs Stiles back and gives him a crooked smile. Tells him, “I hope it works.”

***

Stiles finds out two days later that the process can only be started by an alpha. He screams his frustration and the pack winces in the kitchen. Stiles burns down the training course behind the house and nearly rips Erica to shreds when she tries to see if he’s okay.

“No. No,” Stiles snarls, eyes snaked through with black, “I am very much not okay.”

His magic nearly levels the forest for fifty meters in every direction.

Scott comes to check on Stiles and gets singed for his efforts. Stiles screams at him, rages angrily, incoherently at Scott.

“This is your fault,” Stiles accuses, “You’re the alpha. You made him give up being the alpha.”

His sclera are pitch black and he hisses, “You killed him.”

***

Stiles apologizes later. Bakes Scott crooked apology brownies and they sit together on the tatty old couch Allison keeps threatening to throw out, chewing their way through the pan. They sit there when it’s done and Scott bumps Stiles’ shoulder and everything is forgiven.

***

The second spell takes Stiles three months to find and it kills everyone to see the hope in Stiles’ face because they know this one will be just as bad when Lydia shakes her head from behind Stiles.

It’s bad.

When Deaton explains that what Stiles found is small magic, an invitation of growth which brings the target back, Stiles nearly levels the clinic with the force of his magic. He shoots dark looks at the pack when they try to approach him as he slams the door of the pack home shut. Lets Lydia tell them what’s wrong as he goes upstairs to sob and scream his frustration into his pillow.

“It’s a difference in how his magic works,” Lydia says, cool, calm, collected, “Stiles can do big magic, shields, call down lightning, stuff like that. He can’t do small magic. Ask him to light a candle and he’ll set the whole house on fire.”

The pack gets it. Everyone gets it and it kills them to see Stiles this way.

***

Stiles knows he’s slowly poisoning the pack. He knows he is. Can feel the way his poisonous obsession is warping their bonds. Erica snaps at Boyd without even knowing why. Isaac won’t look Danny in the face anymore. Chris and Peter nearly strangle each other over something stupid. Allison almost shoots Scott in the face when they disagree over nursery colors. Cora is the worst by far; she nearly tears down the entire house in a fit of blind rage.

The only ones who are remotely fine are Jackson and Lydia. And that’s only because Jackson tried to ignore Lydia and got his entire sock drawer dumped in the lake in retaliation.

It takes a while, but the pack finally realizes what’s happening. They realize that Stiles is starting to become the poison that’s killing them slowly instead of the glue that holds them strong.

Stiles goes out to live in the pack’s honeymoon cabin a mile into the forest.

***

No one except Lydia visits him anymore.

***

“I get it,” She says one day when they’re poring over books about magically keeping decomposition at bay.

Stiles looks up, highlighter in his mouth, tilts his head.

“I would do the same for Jackson, almost did,” She smiles crookedly at him before going back to her book.

And something inside of Stiles unlocks a little. Because that’s what he’s needed to hear for months now. He’s needed someone to tell him he’s not crazy, that they would do the same. That they understand.

For the first time since Derek died, Stiles doesn’t feel like he’s drowning anymore.

***

Lydia disappears for a couple days. She leaves a note on the fridge that just says “Went to go borrow a book, don’t look for me Stiles.”

Stiles tries anyway and finds nothing because Lydia knows him too well and took his notice-me-not talisman with her.

***

Three days later, the front page of every newspaper is in an uproar over an ancient tome being stolen from one of the most heavily secured museums in the world. The picture has just the faintest hint of strawberry blonde hair peeking out from a balaclava as the figure pictured zips towards the windowed ceiling.

Stiles laughs until he cries.

***

He hugs Lydia when she comes waltzing in through his door. She laughs and hugs him back, squeezes him hard.

“This is it,” Stiles breathes, more question than confirmation.

“Yeah, this is it,” Lydia replies.

It takes them less than an hour to find the spell they’re looking for.

***

When the next full moon comes, Stiles stands with his hands on Derek’s gravestone, incanting Latin while Lydia methodically sets everything on fire in the precise order specified in the book. Stiles incants until his mouth goes dry, sucks in a deep breath and keeps going. The spell itself is two and a half pages of Latin that took Stiles six sleepless days to learn, but he knows the words so well that he can recite them in his sleep. Did for a bit when he passed out for a power nap.

Lydia’s of the mind that that’s the reason the half dead fichus in Stiles’ kitchen is no longer half dead.

Stiles recites until he hits the end and then waits. Every flame in the clearing winks out and then there’s a pulling sensation in Stiles’ body. It feels like his magic is being sucked out through his hands and down into Derek’s grave. When the moonlight hits the crystal Stiles has carefully balanced on the gravestone, it splits, cracking the stone along with it. The ground heaves and throws Stiles back a few feet, where he lands heavily on his back.

Lydia takes a step forward and Stiles shakes his head.

“He threw me around a lot,” Stiles cracks a weak smile, “This isn’t new.”

It’s stupid but it gets a small smile out of Lydia. The ground shudders and dirt blasts out. Derek hauls himself out of the ground and tosses his head back and howls. He shakes himself and stands, rubbing the dirt off his face as best as he can. And then he looks up.

“Stiles?”

***

Lydia leaves them to their own devices after they fix the dirt in front of the grave. Tells them not to make too much noise because the whole pack knows Stiles is a screamer and a mile isn’t that big of a distance.

They tumble through the front door of the cottage and Derek hauls Stiles up by his thighs. He stumbles towards the stairs, tracking mud everywhere and laughing and kissing Stiles.

“I missed you,” Stiles breathes out between kisses.

Derek doesn’t say anything and there’s a stab of pain in Stiles’ heart. Even though he knows that Derek can’t possibly miss anyone when he’s dead, it still hurts.

It hurts so much less when Derek puts down Stiles only long enough to shuck his dirty clothing into a heap on the bathroom floor before he picks Stiles up again.

“You have to put me down,” Stiles groans out as Derek steps into the shower. He has his ankles crossed behind Derek’s back, practically sitting on Derek’s thigh as Derek attempts to turn on the shower with his foot.

“Don’t wanna let go of you,” Derek growls, “Missed you like I haven’t seen you in months.”

Stiles doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it has been months.

***

The water is hot and scalding and it feels like Stiles is being stabbed everywhere but he ignores it because he’s missed this. He’s missed the long slow slide of Derek in him as they pant for air. Derek’s holding him too close, there’s barely enough room for Derek to pull out before he pushes back, slow enough that Stiles feels every goddamn second of it acutely.

Stiles digs his fingers into the meat of Derek’s shoulders and rolls his dick against the ridiculousness that is Derek’s stomach, letting the water slick the way. He trades biting kisses with Derek and slow, filthy ones as well. Derek loses his footing for a moment and shoves straight against Stiles’ prostate. Stiles curses wildly and then they’re going down as gently as Derek can lower them and suddenly Stiles is riding Derek in the bathtub.

Derek’s propped himself up against the wall under the shower head and Stiles thanks Scott for being unable to follow instructions and putting the handle and spout up high accidentally. He leans forward and mouths at Derek’s chest. Derek coaxes him up with a firm hand on Stiles’ neck and draws him in for more open mouthed kisses where their teeth click and Derek sucks on Stiles’ lower lip. It’s maddening and it’s not enough and when Stiles accidentally sucks in a mouthful of water instead of air and sputters everywhere, Derek laughs.

It’s perfect.

***

It’s quickly obvious that something’s wrong with Derek.

“It’s like he doesn’t remember the fire,” Lydia says one day when they’re watching Derek in his wolf form run into the woods. The moon is fat and low above them and they’re sitting on the porch together drinking limoncello that Lydia brewed in her kitchen.

“He’s not broody enough,” Stiles agrees.

Lydia stands abruptly and delicately sets down her flute of limoncello before clicking into the house on her absurdly high (and sharp, personally Stiles thinks Lydia could kill a man with those shoes) heels. Ten minutes later she’s back.

Fuck. Stiles knows that face. That’s the “we’re idiots why didn’t we read everything” face. Only bad things happens with that face.

Lydia sits down, throws back her entire flute in one smooth swallow and hands the book over to Stiles.

Stiles reads. Reads about how the soul of a wolf hangs about for a while after death, linked to the spot of its burial as it slowly fades. Reads about how the memories slowly disappear as if they’re being erased from a diary.

“The earlier the memory, the quicker it is to go,” Lydia says quietly beside him, “It’s why he doesn’t remember Kate or the fire or anything before it. All he remembers is you and the pack.”

It’s sad and horrifying and it makes Stiles’ heart seize up. Derek comes flying out of the woods and nearly bowls Stiles over. He snuffles over every inch of Stiles and then looks up, his big, electric blue eyes full of worry.

“It’s nothing,” Stiles says. And he doesn’t need Derek’s skeptical face to tell him that it’s a lie, because it can’t be anything else.

***

They can’t stop Derek’s body from decaying. It’s a painful reminder that Derek’s not really alive. No matter how hard he and Lydia look, there’s nothing. They try every spell in every book that keeps things from decomposing. Derek’s body just keeps dying.

It’s kind of disgusting and it definitely doesn’t smell good. When Stiles does see the pack, he can tell they want to comment on the scent of decay that surrounds him. And he’s so grateful when they don’t. Eventually he and Lydia settle on a spell that will preserve Derek’s bones but require his flesh to be gone. So Stiles asks Derek if he can do this and Derek presses close, puts the most chaste of kisses on Stiles’ lips and says that if he can stay with Stiles he doesn’t need his body.

And then he lets Stiles collapse into his half gone chest and cry.

Lydia is the one does the spell this time, because Stiles is red eyed from crying and can barely say a whole sentence without hiccoughing. When she sees the state he’s in, she just sighs and says that a harbinger of death is the only one who can perform the spell anyway. Stiles laughs, even though it’s more of a croak.

“What would I have done without a banshee by my side?” Stiles whispers.

“Cry more,” Lydia says and flips her hair over her shoulder. But they both know she would’ve sat with him and fed him gallons of ice cream while they watched shitty romcoms as they watched Derek die all over again. And she would’ve let him cry into the shitty decorative pillows Derek insists they have because he’s weird like that and she would’ve just pretended that he was having a sneezing fit. Because it’s Lydia and she understands.

***

It’s weird, having a Derek who’s all bones and yet can still talk. It goes against everything biology has taught him. It’s kind of hilarious, in a really sad way, when Derek’s teeth click together on hard sounding syllables and Stiles can physically see it happen.

But even the talking fades, until Derek’s mouth moves but there’s no more sound. Derek writes everything down, dips the distal phalanx of what used to be his index finger into the half a million ink pots Stiles keeps everywhere and paints what he wants to write onto the pads of paper Stiles keeps with him. And the irony of it all makes Stiles laugh until his throat is raw. Only Derek would be so controversial as to be talkative now that he doesn’t have a voice. Only Derek would use his words so much that his bone turns black from the ink when he can’t speak.

Everything keeps moving on but Stiles gets quieter and quieter. Talks to the pack less and less until Lydia is the only one who can pry any words out of him at all, and even then, it’s only on the full moons, which have suddenly become their “talk to Lydia, it’s therapeutic” times.

***

“I miss him so much,” Stiles says eventually, voice thin and soft, “So much.”

“It’s not the real Derek,” He says.

And that’s it.  That's the crux of the matter.  That’s all he has to say because he feels Lydia’s hand in his hair, carding through it softly. And he knows she gets it. He knows that she still remembers the days when Jackson was the kanima and it wasn’t Jackson.

“This isn’t what I wanted.”

“What did you want then?” Lydia asks, her voice is clear and firm. It sounds like an ultimatum to Stiles.

“I didn’t want to watch Derek die all over again. It hurts more this time, because I know it’s me who did it,” He gasps out. The words stick in his throat.

“What do you want now?”

“I…” Stiles hesitates and swallows thickly.

Lydia waits, just like she always does, because Stiles waited for her to pull herself together for Jackson.

“I want to kill Derek,” Stiles says finally, “And I want to go with him.”

“There’s an eternal afterlife spell,” Lydia says casually, “If the love behind it is strong enough.”

That’s perfect, is what Stiles wants to say, but it gets stuck in his throat. Lydia understands him anyway and pats his knee before handing him a shot of amaretto and telling him to drink up.

***

Lydia ditches him. Stiles spends hours poring over books, trying to find the exact version of the spell with Derek curled into a warm pile of bones on his stomach.

“This would go twice as fast if Lydia were here,” Stiles says to Derek, who nods sleepily, “But she’s not here, she ditched me for her own project.”

He affects a pout and Derek stretches up to press his forehead against Stiles.

“I guess I can’t blame her,” Stiles cracks a tired smile. He waves a hand vaguely at everything in the living room.

“I’m tired of it too,” He whispers to Derek, “I’m so fucking tired.”

***

The weirdest thing is that suddenly everyone in the pack is speaking to him again and they all demand a whole day of his attention.

Each.

No ifs, ands, or buts.

But.

No buts, Stiles. None. Nada. Isaac actually says it in eight different languages and Stiles is impressed.

***

Erica bakes a pile of snickerdoodles and shows up at Stiles’ door. She takes one look at Derek, laughs and proceeds to tease Derek about everything and anything. Stiles is so fucking grateful that she can just act like it’s still Derek. Eventually, she shooes Derek out the door, citing the fact that he’s been monopolizing Stiles and the rest of the pack needs a turn.

They watch Ryan Gosling and Ryan Renolds and Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth and the other Chris take of their shirts and be attractive and sweaty. They marathon romcoms and action movies until it’s 3 am in the morning and the only thing they’ve eaten all day is snickerdoodles.

When Erica gets up off the couch to leave, Stiles tries to get up to say goodnight. She pushes him back down and kisses him on the forehead.

“Night Batman,” She whispers. Her smile is fond.

“When you wake up, I hope you’re gonna be happy.”

And it’s a confusing sentence, but Stiles is too sleepy to think about it deeply. He’s asleep before Erica closes the door.

***

Boyd takes him fishing on a sunny day and they paddle out into the middle of a lake. Boyd shows him the proper way of hooking a fish and they set their lines out.

They both fall asleep on the boat and when Stiles comes too, Body is staring up at the stars. Stiles takes a page out of Boyd’s book and looks up.

“My mom used to say that every star is someone’s soulmate. She said that when we die, we go join the person who we loved most. I like to think that we get to choose the path that takes us to the stars.”

Stiles waits, because Boyd is the type who drops deep thoughts slowly.

But Boyd just sits up and reels in their lines. He rows them back to shore and when he drops Stiles off in front of the cottage, he pulls Stiles into a bear hug.

“You never hug people other than Erica,” Stiles’ mouth still gets the better of him sometimes.

“Good night, Stiles. And I hope you can be happy when you wake up.”

Stiles frown at Boyd’s retreating back because that sounds suspiciously similar to what Erica said the other night. But he dismisses it.

***

It’s harder to dismiss when it’s him and Isaac and Cora playing GTA-whatever-the-fuck-number-this-is and they say almost the exact same thing to him when they leave.

***

It gets really fucking weird when Chris Argent pats him on the back and grumbles out the same line.

***

Peter hugging him and telling him the same thing is just fucking creepy. It kinda feels like Peter’s going to sneak into his house and douse him in a love potion or something.

***

“We’re going to get vengeance on Harris.”

Stiles blinks at Scott. He’s still really sleepy, and really fucking bleary eyed and why the fuck is Scott a morning person. He’ll never understand why they’re friends because that point alone should’ve stopped their friendship stone cold.

“It’s because you were in too deep before you found out I was a morning person and you can’t go back once you’ve made the pudding cup bond.”

So Stiles yawns and gets dressed.

Scott takes him out for milkshakes. Emphasis on the plural. The first one is a competition to see who can drink it the fastest. Stiles wins by a mile because, werewolf or not, Scott still gets brainfreeze.

They annoy the waitresses by seeing who can blow the biggest bubbles into the bottom of their next one and Dinah gives them the stink eye when they ask for thirds and tells them that they aren’t six anymore.

Scott remembers then that they’re supposed to be getting revenge on Harris and drags Stiles out to his car, where he pops open the trunk and reveals saran wrap and rainbow colored sticky notes. They drive over to BHHS and Scott parks behind the field.

“I put a cone in Harris’ normal spot, so he had to park all the way around back, where he can’t see his car,” Scott sounds absolutely gleeful, and it’s really hard to be unhappy when Scott is beaming sunshine right at Stiles’ face.

They cover Harris’ car with three layers of saran wrap and then carefully lay down stripes of sticky notes in the exact order of the rainbow before putting three more layers of saran wrap over that. Then they hide behind the bleachers and wait for the fireworks.

Every student streaming out of the school stops to boggle at Harris’ car. Harris himself shoves his way through the masses and drops his briefcase in shock. Scott and Stiles dash for Scott’s car, laughing all the way.

“McCall! Stilinski!” Harris yells from behind them, but they peel out of the parking lot in Scott’s car and book it to Scott and Allison’s where they stuff themselves with gummy worms and watch things explode until Stiles’ dad comes in to sigh at them.

“Harris wants you arrested for vandalism.”

“Didn’t do it,” Stiles and Scott chime through a mouthful of gummy worms.

John shakes his head and leaves, presumably to take Melissa on a date because apparently that’s a thing now.

When Stiles leaves, holding his stomach because eating a whole bag of gummy worms is a horrible life choice, Scott hugs him hard and then holds him at arm’s length to look at him solemnly.

“When you get up,” He says, “I think you’re going to be happy.”

And really, now Stiles is just confused.

***

Allison tattoos a new rune into his skin.

“It’s a fortune rune,” She says from underneath her mass of curls, “It doesn’t give you disproportionate luck, but it does bend the odds in your favor a bit. Took me months to learn how to do it properly. If you fuck it up, it does the exact opposite.”

That answers Stiles’ unspoken question of why she didn’t give him this rune before Derek’s death.

When it’s all done and Allison’s cleaned up, she holds both his hands and presses her forehead against his.

“I want you to know, Stiles, that sometimes waking up will make you happier.”

***

His dad and Melissa both hug him and tell him that it’s good he’s going somewhere new. They tell him that sometimes a change of scenery is exactly what people need.

***

Danny and Jackson make Stiles cry. No, really, they make him bawl his eyes out and it’s not because Jackson punched him.

They give him a locket made of silver and wrapped with leather that Stiles knows is from Derek’s jacket. He can still smell the faint scent of Derek’s aftershave on it. Inside is a picture of the whole pack, every last one of them smiling goofily. Danny tells him that everyone in the pack donated some hair to weave into the leather cord. Stiles makes a grossed out face, even though he knows the magical significance of hair given out of someone’s free will.

“Sometimes,” Jackson looks so pained and Stiles is enjoying every minute, “Waking up somewhere else is the answer to being happy.”

***

Of course that’s when Lydia chooses to come sweeping back, looking every inch the perfectly put together genius that she is. She kisses Stiles on both cheeks, dumps a pile of paper in his lap and proceeds to tell him that she traveled all over the world to get this damn eternal-afterlife-because-of-love spell, so he damn sure better appreciate it.

Stiles bowls her over when he hugs her. He’s so happy he doesn’t even bother checking her work.

***

It’s the full moon when they set up the spell (when isn’t it the full moon). Stiles stands with Derek on top of Derek’s grave and Lydia starts chanting. Stiles closes his eyes and lets the flow of energy spiral tighter. It changes abruptly and Stiles whips his head towards Lydia, who is most certainly not saying the words for the afterlife spell. But Stiles can’t stop her, he can’t move, just has to look helplessly as Lydia finishes the spell and puts her hands down.

She walks up to Stiles and puts her hands on his face, leans forward and puts her forehead to his. And she tells him everything. She tells him about she fucking searched for a spell that would keep him and Derek alive and then finally stumbled across a spell that lets her put Stiles in a different dimension where Derek is alive. But the catch is that Stiles has to be dying in that world. So she swapped them. Now Derek in this world will have Stiles and Derek in that world will have Stiles. And maybe it’s the wrong Derek and Stiles in each world, but, she emphasizes, you both get a chance to have Derek, a chance you would have never otherwise gotten.

And Stiles gets it, he really does. He gets that the other Stiles is about to die through no fault of anyone's (Lydia tells him that other him's heart just stops working for an unknown reason) and that his Derek is dead and that they’re going to be dead together and they’re going to get the eternal afterlife where they’ll love each other and still talk about their specific Derek and Stiles occasionally. But Lydia is giving Stiles a living Derek and giving this other Derek a living Stiles.

There are tears streaking down her face as she commands him.

“This time, you’ll be fine. You know how to do everything so you can save everyone. So you have to go and be happy or time space dimensional vortex conjuring being a fucking bitch be damned, I’m going to come after you and whoop your ass.”

She sniffles and lets him go and Stiles feels himself being yanked up. He looks down and there’s Derek’s bones and Stiles’ own body collapsing into ash. There’s hands cupping his face and he looks up and there’s Derek.

“Hey,” He says.

“Hey,” Stiles replies, dumbstruck.

“I love you, I always will,” Derek says, presses his lips to Stiles’ and then pulls back.

“It’s not going to be you,” Stiles mutters, lips brushing against Derek’s.

“It doesn’t matter. As long as I’m Derek Hale and you’re Stiles Stilinski, I will always love you,” Derek kisses him again and this time it’s hard and desperate and Stiles can feel the love that Derek holds for him poured into the kiss.

“So when you wake up,” Derek pants, “You should go and be happy.”

And then Stiles blacks out.

***

He comes to gasping for air and feeling like someone has just punched him in the chest. Peripherally he can see Scott, who looks different, but Stiles is too busy pulling in deep gulps of air to really analyze it. He freezes when there’s a familiar growl.

“This is private property.”

Stiles barely registers what he’s doing before he’s barreling Derek over and pressing his ear to Derek’s chest. He closes his eyes and counts the beats and cries a little bit.

Because here’s Derek, whole and good and alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to drwhoctopus for putting up with me when I wrote this.


End file.
